AUSTRALIA - Work Stopage Over Refinery Leak, More Than 200 Protest Safety Conditions From Petrol Spill on Monday

More than 200 Shell staff stopped work in protest at safety conditions at the Geelong refinery
yesterday, claiming the company failed to warn them of a serious petrol spill.

About 26,000 litres of petrol spilled from a pipeline at the base of a storage tank about 2pm on
Monday.

No workers were evacuated and no one was injured.

Country Fire Authority firefighters were called to contain the area, but as the liquid was pumped out of
the damaged pipe, a second leak occurred.

The Victorian WorkCover Authority and the Environment Protection Authority were also called to
investigate.

The Australian Workers Union's Geelong branch organiser Robert Nichols criticised Shell for not
warning workers of the hazard. He said an alarm should have gone off and the plant should have been
evacuated when the leak began.

The leak was not far from where workers were welding, Mr Nichols said. "It only takes one spark and
the whole place could have gone up. It was not good enough that an alarm was not sounded."

He said 26,000 litres was "a huge amount" and the petrol leak was the second this year. In February,
about 40,000 litres of fuel leaked from a faulty pipe.

The spill comes after the company was hit with a record $225,000 fine in February after it pleaded
guilty to breaching occupational health and safety laws at its Geelong refinery.

Shell pleaded guilty to six offences including breaching safety laws in relation to the maintenance of
firefighting and safety equipment and failing to maintain a safe workplace.

Shell spokesman Rob Hart said the company and union met last night and had agreed that in future the
company would use a refinery-wide alarm to notify workers of hazards.

"A new process and method of communication has been applied and that will be enacted from today,"
Mr Hart said.

He said a maintenance review was continuing and the exact cause of the leak was not yet known. "We
have thousands of kilometres of pipeline and you will get small leaks that occur ... but our engineers
are looking at that now," he said.

He said workers returned to work after the meeting about 4pm.

Mr Hart said the spill was of low risk and there were no sources of ignition near the leak.

"We deemed that the risk was low and therefore the alarm was not sounded," he said.

A WorkCover spokesman said the authority was treating the spill as very serious and an investigation
was under way.

He said petroleum was a dangerous and volatile chemical and maintenance at the refinery would be
examined.

Answers

I am a level 2 chemical engineering undergraduate at 'Queens
University Belfast' in N.Ireland, and as part of my course i am
required to produce a health and safety report on a real life
incident, which in my case happens to be the explosion at the shell
refinery in geelong, Australia on September 13th, 1994. If anyone can
provide me with any information i would be very greatful as my
deadline is fast approaching!!
Thanks, Ronan.